The present invention relates generally to telecommunications systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to telecommunications systems for reporting caller data for calls made to particular telephone numbers.
Advertisers seek to gauge the efficacy of advertising campaigns. These advertisers attempt to target advertising to an intended audience by selecting the advertising campaign media, selecting an appropriate frequency of the campaign, selecting the nature of the advertisements, and other techniques. Advertisers may place advertisements in newspapers, magazines, trade journals, direct mailings, directories, radio, and television. Advertisers do not have a very accurate and timely mechanism for gauging the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.
Examples of measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns include the use of different directory numbers (telephone numbers) for each advertising campaign. In that way, advertisers may analyze telephone records monthly and count the number of calls placed to particular markets. However, this practice is crude, inefficient, and untimely. An automated system that is capable of providing the advertiser with tailored and accurate reports on which advertising campaigns are effective has eluded those skilled in the art.
Additionally, if an advertiser could immediately evaluate the effectiveness of a campaign, the advertiser has the opportunity to immediately discontinue a costly advertising campaign. Reviewing monthly phone bills or monthly reporting would be inadequate to serve the advertiser's needs. In addition, such reporting does not capture a crucial piece of information to the advertiser (e.g., the caller's gender and what calls were attempted to the advertiser, but were not completed, because of a busy signal or no answer). That information would not be available through conventional telephone billing or reporting services. The advertiser would very much like to identify potential customers for whom the advertising was effective, but whose needs went unsatisfied, for example, because of no answer or a busy signal.
It would thus be advantageous to provide a system and a method for collecting caller information and processing the information after collection.